Billian Ojiwa is a Kenyan politician and a community leader with over 10 years of experience in community development. He is the founder of the Billian Resource and Leadership Center based in The Mathare informal settlement, the second largest informal settlement in Kenya after Kibera. The center offers after school programs, equipped with a library and physiotherapy to children living with disabilities. He is also the founder of the Ficha Uchi Initiative with over 100 youth volunteers, collaborating with local tailors to provide school uniforms for students in the community. An initiative that has so far provided new school uniforms to over 50 primary schools with over 5,000 students hence restoring their dignity and confidence. Additionally, he founded The Mathare Awards, an Initiative that identifies and celebrates community members and organizations that contribute to the community development.
His community involvement has seen him recognized and feted by various organizations locally and internationally among them The New York Times, The Young Kenyan Award by the Rotary Club in 2012
and The ZDF German TV 2020 HERO of the Year, acknowledging innovative ideas in The Mathare informal settlement that helped in keeping the community safe while directly employing 180 women and Youth and indirectly supporting over 200,000 households in Mathare during the Covid-19 pandemic.
His political career spans a decade having taken part in the Mathare Constituency Parliamentary Election (MP) in 2022, he has also served as KANU Youth Congress President from 2014 to 2017, representing the youth at the Executive, created Youth congress structures across the country and introduced Jukwaa La Siasa an open platform for young people across the political parties to discuss issues affecting young people and political space for young people.
Billian is an alumni of the Austrian Leadership Program 2018 and The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is the flagship program of the U.S. Government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).